Marketing

Topics consist of:

• rejected credit cards
• refunds
• download issues
• donation receipts for Germany, Europe, US and rest of the world
• easy donation confirmation

Thanks for that! Some comments:

• add words of thanks for our donors and supporters, you can take these
  out of the annual report if you want

• staff -> team

• "tender specific tasks" is enough, remove the improvement part of the
  sentence

• for the cost of donations paragraph, maybe add some hint that
  donations under 5 € might cost more in the end than they bring us

• a paragraph about other payment options is worthwhile; we often get
  asked about that, and it's a nightmare in terms of accounting and
  administration and not worth the hassles to add YourFavoritePay service

• for download issues, add that refunds of donations take administrative
  time we prefer to use for the project work plus it costs quite some
  fees; but if someone wants a refund, please mail
  treasurer@documentfoundation.org with their PayPal transaction ID rather
  than filing a complaint with PayPal

• for donation confirmations, add that we can provide informal English
  ones or formal German ones. However, writing, signing, printing and
  snailmailing these cost time and money, and for donations below 200 €
  there's an easy donation confirmation [cf. link on the German website]
  they can use

• credit card rejections also happen when the card has been issued in a
  different country than where the IP originates from

• for refunds, see above, maybe makes sense combining these

I'll reply later this, early next week

Didn't proofread yet, but one other thing that popped to my mind, as we
had this recently:

A donation confirmation can only be issued on the name associated with
the donation. Private PayPal accounts cannot get a confirmation on the
business name, and with credit cards the problem is the same, plus
usually they only have a private name on them.

• old: The download and donation mechanisms are completely independent
  • new: The download and donation mechanisms are completely independent,
    donations are purely optional, and LibreOffice can always be downloaded
    free of charge
  • in the same paragraph also add a note about the "To manually download
    click here" link which many people miss :)

• Donation confirmation
  • you can add a hint that it's complicated to issue a reliable
    confirmation, as sometimes there is a huge delay from e.g. credit card
    vendors
  • also add a note that due to the nature of it, we cannot issue a
    confirmation for BitPay or Flattr donations

• Donation receipts
  • Add a note "Donation confirmations take a significant amount of time
    and work we would rather use for your project activities. In case your
    donation is below 200 €, we kindly ask you to go work with the
    simplified donation recipiet first."

Sounds great to me, thanks a lot!

One thing is missing, maybe you can add this:

A donation confirmation can only be issued on the name associated with
the donation. Private PayPal accounts cannot get a confirmation on the
business name, and with credit cards the problem is the same, plus
usually they only have a private name on them.

And another clarification:

• "Often, it is difficult to issue an automated/instant donation
  confirmation for credit cards" the automated/instant is key ;-)

• You can also leave out "Before asking for a donation receipt, though,
  you should verify if the donation to a German charity can be deducted
  from your tax declaration." - people usually need this for accounting
  purposes to have any form of receipt.

The text has all it should, but - the more I think about it, the more I
think it feels rather negative. I don't have any better idea either, as
the donation handling is painful in fact. ;-) But I fear a bit we
might distract people from donating...

Mike, do you have any idea how to phrase that more positive?

Florian Effenberger wrote:

The text has all it should, but - the more I think about it, the more I
think it feels rather negative. I don't have any better idea either, as
the donation handling is painful in fact. ;-) But I fear a bit we
might distract people from donating...

Mike, do you have any idea how to phrase that more positive?

If it's a page that we point people to when they have problems donating, I'm not so worried about negativity as those readers will already have experienced a problem. In that sense, would it be worth putting it on the TDF blog as a page, rather than a post? Then it won't appear on the front page or regular feeds -- it's just something we can use when we need it.

In any case, I think it's good that we have a positive message at the beginning -- so maybe we should end as well with a short and positive section like:

Thank you!

As mentioned, donations are vital for helping The Document Foundation and LibreOffice to thrive. With your support, we can improve our infrastructure, pay our team, organise our conference and do many other things to make LibreOffice even better.

A couple of other things:

• minumum -> minimum
• on our bank account -> in our bank account
• In addition,we -> In addition, we

There are a couple of mentions of "credit card circuit" but that doesn't seem to be common wording... Is it referring to credit card payment gateways?

experienced a problem. In that sense, would it be worth putting it on
the TDF blog as a page, rather than a post? Then it won't appear on
the front page or regular feeds -- it's just something we can use when
we need it.

Sounds sensible indeed. And how about then linking it from the download
& donate page as "Experiencing problems with downloading or donating?
Please read our extensive FAQ." or something like that; wording
proposals appreciated. ;-)

"Thank you!

As mentioned, donations are vital for helping The Document Foundation
and LibreOffice to thrive. With your support, we can improve our
infrastructure, pay our team, organise our conference and do many other
things to make LibreOffice even better."

Sounds great!

There are a couple of mentions of "credit card circuit" but that doesn't
seem to be common wording... Is it referring to credit card payment
gateways?

How about "credit card processors"? Is that the common term?

Italo, can you create the draft page in the blog with the latest changes factored in?

Will prepare a draft during the weekend

Page preview (I don't know if it works for everyone):

https://blog.documentfoundation.org/?page_id=5662&preview_id=5662